More days working on the Christmas album, yesterday and today working on an arrangement of Maggie Shaw's contribution. I also re-recorded a few of the guitars for Christmas Smells and changed the finale a little. I think this is all complete now.
I also registered with SongKick, which is a website for listing live music shows which integrates with Bandcamp, Spotify and other platforms. This may be useful in spreading the word with any of my, or our Fall in Green, music performances.
Indeed, there are some in the pipeline. We are set to perform something at John Lindley and Mike Drew's People and Places event in Congleton Library on November 22nd, I've been offered the chance to perform five We Robot songs in Kings Place Macclesfield on the 29th, then the live Crewe Library event on Dec 12th, which is the book launch of Deb's latest book (I Slip into French like Tolstoy) together with performances of some of the Christmas album songs.
My live songs have been inconsistent in method and quality, primarily due to the need to play and sing at the same time; due to the complex multi-layered music; due to the lack of a band or any collaborating musicians; and the need to memorise all of the lyrics as well as the music. Song performances could be either involve singing to a pre-recorded backing track, or performing a cut-down version with a single piano-like lead instrument (a so-called 'unplugged' version - even if I ironically use a synthesizer which is 'plugged in'). Regarding backing tracks, I've never done this completely, adding a live synth over some elements, as done for the Marius Fate performances in Wistaston Memorial Hall and All Saints' Church. The cut-down versions can be a worst-case of being very technically difficult and sounding poor.
The live music that doesn't involve singing, such as piano playing, or the Spiral Staircase synth performances could involve multiple instruments I'd dart between. These sounded very good, at least as good as the studio recorded versions and sometimes better. The Spiral Staircase used backing tracks for the repetitive arpeggios, so these too were a case of augmentation of that pre-recorded music, though many (if not most) of the other parts were played live.
I would be a good time to start investigation and improvement of these live performances.
